There are moments when I try to convince myself that all of this is fading.
The shower is usually one of them.
Because a shower seems far too small to contain an obsession.
Too ordinary.
Too ridiculous.
I step in thinking about something else.
A grocery list.
An email I should answer.
A bill.
Anything.
For a few seconds it works.
Then it doesn’t.
Then it appears.
Not the Master exactly.
Not an image.
Not a voice.
Something worse.
The feeling that the Master was already there before I arrived.
As if he had arrived first.
As if he had been waiting inside the sound of the water.
Then I become still.
Too still.
For much longer than necessary.
The water keeps striking the same spot on my shoulder.
I do not know for how long.
Sometimes I think it has been thirty seconds.
Then I discover eight minutes have passed.
Once it was seventeen.
Seventeen minutes staring at a white tile with a microscopic crack near one corner.
I remember that crack.
I remember that crack perfectly.
I do not remember what I was thinking.
I remember the crack.
And I remember the Master.
I do not understand why those two things remain together.
I try to interrupt it.
I cover my ears with my fingers.
It is absurd.
Because the water should become quieter.
Instead something strange happens.
The water becomes louder.
Much louder.
It turns into a compact presence.
A continuous pressure.
A shapeless sound.
And inside that sound it appears again.
Not a sentence.
Not a command.
Just a certainty.
The Master remains.
He remains the way certain songs remain even when you dislike them.
He remains the way you remember the name of someone you met only once.
He remains the way shame remains.
Especially the way shame remains.
Because the more I try to explain it, the less sense it makes.
And the less sense it makes, the more room it occupies.
Sometimes I think I should be worried.
But even worry does not quite fit.
It is not fear.
It is not sadness.
It is not desire.
It is something stranger.
Something like finding a chair moved a few inches every day.
It is not serious.
It is not important.
But after months you begin thinking about the chair constantly.
You look at the chair before anything else.
You wonder who keeps moving it.
You wonder whether it is moving at all.
And eventually you realize you are no longer thinking about the chair.
The chair is thinking about you.
Something similar happens with the Master.
This morning I discovered something else.
While drying myself.
I noticed a faint circular mark.
Almost gone now.
Just a shadow.
The kind of shadow nobody would notice.
I looked at it for far too long.
Not out of nostalgia.
Not out of pride.
Not even out of desire.
I looked at it because it felt like physical evidence of something my mind keeps repeating.
The mark is fading.
The obsession is not.
It should be the other way around.
Logic says it should be the other way around.
But logic has started losing authority over certain matters.
Perhaps that is the most embarrassing part.
Not thinking about the Master.
But discovering that part of me seems to organize an entire day around a presence that is not even there.
And the more I try to remove it.
The calmer it becomes.
The quieter it becomes.
The more permanent it becomes.
As if it understood something before I did.
As if it were waiting.
As if it knew that sooner or later I would stand motionless beneath the water again.
Listening to a sound that says nothing.
And listening to it for far too long.
The neck I am not moving it the neck has locked I should…
